Valley Views: Fiscal crisis began with George W. Bush

12:12 AM,
Dec. 5, 2012

John Hall Photo by Lee Ferris

Written by

John Hall

Early in his first term, President George W. Bush decided to give everybody a tax cut, including millionaires and billionaires who were hardly suffering during the Clinton years. Although his Republican allies in the House of Representatives and Senate dearly wanted to make these tax cuts permanent, they were informed by the Congressional Budget Office that doing so would blow up the deficit, adding trillions of dollars to the national debt in the long term.

Faced with this surprising bit of reality, President Bush and company decided to go ahead with this attempt at stimulating the ...